I entered this cross country season with pretty high expectations.
There was no reason for me not to. I had finally established myself as a competitive runner in the 4x800 relay and the 800-meter run. For once, I was up with my teammates.
Well, actually I was right up with them at the beginning of the season, but they improved more than I did. Despite that, I had completely changed and wasn’t the slow girl for once.
It wasn’t long after track season ended before I started summer training. Summer training went surprisingly well, considering the chaos of going to Camp Cherith for three weeks and my family reunion in Lake Tahoe. Yes, I was gone at camp for a while, but I managed to get runs in on the weekends and even a few early morning hill and interval workouts.
Less than a week after I got out of camp, I headed down to Lake Tahoe. I got lots of altitude training done there. However, the altitude training wore me out. I didn’t really have time to recover.
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This fatigue didn’t show up until the worst day possible – the first day of the season. Just the Saturday before, I had been doing long runs faster than ever. Monday morning, however, I woke up and showed up to practice.
I ended up running on my own, since I didn’t have my paperwork done, but I was a little grateful as I was all of a sudden super tired and slow for me. This spell lasted for a week and a half, and I had a decent first meet. I don’t believe that I ever really recovered, but I was doing better than I had ever done before as far as beginning of seasons go.
However, if you don’t really truly recover from exhaustion, it will come back to bite you. I found that out at the Frazee Fischer farm. The funny part is that it was kind of a repeat of last year. I did well until I ran this meet again.
I realized I was super tired still. Then, I got a minor sprain in my ankle running down a hill with an uneven surface. This set me back a few days.
After recovering, I was determined to have nothing else go wrong. I did not want to get sick like I did last year. I even put off homework to get sleep, which never happens for me.
The scary thing is that I got sick at the same time as last year. Soon, however, I learned that it wasn’t the normal bug that was going around.
I felt horribly icky, but that wasn’t the worst part. I seriously couldn’t think well at all. I felt like my brain was in a cloud of fuzz. I didn’t have a fever, but I would have incidents that I can best describe as a toned down version of hot flashes. I got worn out so easily.
Later when I ran around to take pictures for a meet, I would get a little light-headed just doing that. My appetite slowly started to disappear.
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I don’t want to go into detail, but the day after I came back from staying home sick, some people viewed my staying home as me being a wimp. I underwent an incident that destroyed me mentally and brought my appetite to an all-time low.
I had to deal with the shock of this ordeal, the stress of school and being sick. My entire future was uncertain. The only good thing was that I learned a very important lesson. However, I didn’t entirely enjoy learning that good people can do bad things that you could never imagine them doing.
I got a little back into shape after somewhat recovering from the incident. I ran the hardest I’ve ever run at a meet, but I still was slower when I ran that course my freshman year.
The sections meet was basically a repeat of last year. My teammates did well, but I felt not really in it like I did last year and ran a very similar time. I must say that my friend Megan definitely deserved it though, and I wish them the best of luck at state.
This season definitely changed me. I learned that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and sometimes you get life lessons that you wish that you didn’t have to learn. However, I also know that the greatest things come out of ashes. I know that something good will come out of this. I have made a promise to myself, and I don’t think that I will be recognizable this track season when I come out there.
People will let you down. You’ve got to get up and show them that you’re better than that.
Holly McCamant is a junior at Frazee-Vergas High School.
